Appeals Court Validates Google's Mammoth Books Project

"The appeals court recognized that the Google search engine "creates new forms of research, such as text mining and data mining," said Ben Depoorter, Hastings Research Chair at UC Hastings College of the Law.

"Google's Ngrams, for instance, furnish statistical information to users about the frequency of word and phrase usage over time. The case is a vivid illustration of the fact that you can get away with a lot of copying if you also provide a very tangible, socially valuable product in the process," he told the E-Commerce Times."